THE BLUE BOOK UNKNOWNS
The unexplained UFO reports from the files of the U.S. Air
Force's Project Blue Book UFO investigations.
Compiled by Don Berliner, for the Fund for UFO Research
the conclusions or views expressed in this
publication are the views of the author(s)
and do not necessarily reflect the opinions
of the Fund for UFO Research, Inc.
THE UNEXPLAINED UFO CASES FROM THE PROJECT BLUE BOOK FILES
In January, 1974, I visited the U.S. Air Force Archives at
Maxwell AFB,.Montgomery, Ala., to review the files of Project
Blue Book as the first step toward writing a book on the subject.
In a full week, I read all the "unexplained" cases in the
original files and made extensive notes, including the names and
other identifying information on all witnesses where given. The
cooperation of the staff of the Archives was excellent, and no
restrictions were placed on my work.
A few months later, the files were withdrawn from public
view so they could be prepared for transfer to the National
Archives in Washington, D.C. This process involved making a
xerox copy of almost 30 file drawers of material, blacking out
the names and other identifiers of all witnesses, and then
microfilming the censored xerox copy. The microfilm has been
available to the public at the National Archives since 1976. The
original Project Blue Book files remain under lock and key at the
Archives.
On almost every page of the 12,000+ case files, there are
big black marks where information that could be used to cross-
check Project Blue Book's controversial work has been censored.
This includes the names of witnesses to widely-publicized cases,
and even names in newspaper clippings!
As it was perfectly legal for me to copy witness' names when
I visited the Air Force Archives, those names can be found in
this report of 585 (less 13 missing) unexplained cases. And
since the Privacy Act, which motivated the Air Force to censor
the files in the first place, does not apply to reporters or
anyone else outside the Government, they can be used as the
reader pleases.
Inasmuch as the book I planned to write has never progressed
beyond the manuscript stage, I see no reason to keep this
information under wraps any longer. Perhaps it will encourage
others to re-investigate cases and make the results known.
"Unidentified" says a great deal...and it says almost
nothing.
Probably the most controversial aspect of the entire Air
Force investigation of UFOs was its handling of individual cases.
The means by.which one case was determined to be "identified" and
another "unidentified" has no doubt fueled more arguments about
Project Blue Book than anything else it did.
For many years, Blue Book's most vocal opponents have
insisted that the standards by which cases were allegedly
explained were grossly unscientific. Blue Book's goal, according
to those who held it low esteem, was to attach some explanation
to every case, regardless of logic or common sense. Examples of
Blue Book saying a violently maneuvering disc was an aircraft, or
of blaming a puzzling radar tracking on a supposedly
malfunctioning radar set which it never bothered to check out,
are numerous in the popular UFO literature.
And they are even more numerous in the files of Project Blue
Book. The urgency with which Blue Book officials tagged answers
onto cases without having done the proper investigation is
obvious, though not proven. But if the Air Force was so eager to
label cases "identified", despite the lack of supporting
evidence, then those few cases which it labeled "unidentified"
presumably withstood every attempt to apply every other kind of
label. And so it may be that those cases are truly
unidentifiable in familiar terms.
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Indeed, the Air Force defines "unidentifiable" cases as
those which "apparently contain all pertinent data necessary to
suggest a valid hypothesis concerning the lack of explanation of
the report, but the description of the object or its motion
cannot be correlated with any known object or phenomenon."
To meet such criteria, a report must obviously come from a
reputable source, and it must not bear any resemblance to
airplanes, balloons, helicopters, spacecraft, birds, clouds,
stars, planets, meteors, comets, electrical phenomena, or
anything else known to frequent the air, the sky, or nearby
space.
Unfortunately, the Air Force failed to stick to its own
rules. Some of the "unidentifiable" cases most certainly can be
correlated with known objects or phenomena. But most of them
cannot. Moreover, many of the so-called "identified" cases
cannot honestly be so correlated. But we are primarily concerned
here with those cases which Project Blue Book openly admits it
tried to explain and failed.
The amount of detail in these cases varies enormously. Some
cases - frequently those which were well publicized at the time
of the event - contain considerable information, while others are
vague and seriously incomplete. Project Blue Book generally
placed the blame for such incompleteness on the witnesses, but it
should take its own share of the responsibility. 'In thousands of
cases, there is no completed questionnaire in the Project files,
nor even any indication that one was sent to the witness. And in
iv
most of the instances where a questionnaire was filled out, it
was never followed up to get more complete answers to questions
which the witnesses failed to deal with properly. For much of
the life of Project Blue Book and its predecessors, there was no
satisfactory.questionnaire at all. And one of those used for a
lengthy period was so badly organized that a witness should not
be held to blame for giving incomplete answers.
Yet, despite all the roadblocks, many reports are
sufficiently complete to tell a pretty clear story of a puzzling
experience. With this data now available, anyone can look at
Project Blue Book's "unidentified" UFO reports and make up his
own mind.